Mark DuCharme


The Unfinished

The institution was coming
Through the grammar of the institution the in-
stitution sways
Engendering an unrest like seminoles
Or any seminal confines
Whereas to have begun inclemently
Constructing particles which are beginning
To concur
At which what’s risked is deafening combines
Confines of a proposed sleep
Until sleep is deafening orgies
Darkening a piracy of intuition’s dark subjects
The future is bounding          subjects
The surface premonitions were almost dark
It escapes through taking in the nakedly
Visible      who completely swerves
Who unlike cars are approaching
Glass / who incomplete, are surfacing
As what’s still visible in the
Dark
Where you are you      are
Destined toward whereof I speak
To reconnect its sway
Where? among the ghosts, still
Incomplete as night’s dark language
Though sensible as incomplete parking
To thump the romantic party lurkers
Rioting in the eaves
While I collaborate with my      self
& With it stirs
Until what veers must cease

     2/
What does it mean to finish
What was said

Finish others’ sentences
As if one were a Finn or an onlooker

Unwanting through repeat       delirium
Or rumor: I repeat

There is dust on the windowsills that no one looks
At       a steady mark of reflection

Whose “finishing touches” defy the outbound
The reckless, militantly inward

     3/

The poodle was rushed to the saloon
Adjacent as whispering     to what?
What was thought
      Written in People
I was a thing, an in-
         complete statement
Shattered like pavement; it
    Was surfaces something
Complicated in         telling
    Closer than reflection— which starts
         To complicate desire

                         nearer than what

           contains as surveys

that in night would still not mend

                             up to its suction or legend
outtake

                      surfaces a blank at even

     4/
The woman
Called out Hello
But appeared
To be talk
ing to no
one

     5/
Vast transit reap survey
The same if only          louder

Above surfaces (or surveys)
           The chair was not
                           Or was it jerking

      I couldn’t have staged the
REPEAT                       repeat sentences arisen

What’s arrogantly concealed, above our
      Tongues              shadows forge
                        As contorted as retorts

As if a gunbarrel, a loose surcharge
              To direct in trafficked dances

Dare I repeat the idiom of an onrush
This imposition or air is sweeter than music

                                              Unerotic surcharge

                                Autodenial

     6/
Four score and seven years agog
For scare and heaven’s ears
Fair scare at heathens
Fear sere at ____
For scorned
F***

        We whose truths are outright gardens

                                              Score here at evidence
                                       Maybe heaven repeats
                                  An outright primate
                             Agog, to scramble
                        Until botched, like heaven’s scare

     7/
To still dream, at night repeating—
           & Bend like wings on

                                                   impact

     8/

Mark DuCharme's recent books and chapbooks include The Sensory Cabinet (BlazeVOX Books, 2007); The Crowd Poems (Potato Clock Editions, 2007); Infinity Subsections (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004); and Cosmopolitan Tremble (Pavement Saw Press, 2002). His poetry and essays are recent or forthcoming in The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel—2nd Floor; Blowfish; Coconut; Fascicle; Hamilton Stone Review; Milk; New American Writing; Not Enough Night; Onedit; Talisman; Uncontained: Writers and Photographers in the Garden and on the Margins; and Vanitas, among others. He has taught in Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program and at Front Range Community College. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

 
 
 
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